


Bring Her In

by zilia



Series: Outside/Inside [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soul Bond, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 07:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11869860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zilia/pseuds/zilia
Summary: Agent Barton was sent to bring her in.He made a different call.





	Bring Her In

**Author's Note:**

> The second fic in my series about telepathic bonds between soulmates, although chronologically it takes place before the first.
> 
> Thanks very much to Claudia_flies for all her help with this! I couldn't have done it without her.

_Agent Barton was sent to bring her in._

_He made a different call._

_***_

Natalia keeps her head low amongst the milling crowds around the Mátyás-templom, regretting the bright yellow sundress she’d chosen that morning in an attempt to look more like a tourist. She’s already ditched the hat, but the dress does make her stand out, even though it billows out enough to cover the gun and knives in her thigh holsters. Maybe there’s somewhere she can steal a t-shirt or a scarf, cover herself up a little so that she looks less distinctive. Even with her hair dyed brown, she still hasn’t been able to shake her tail.

He’s smart, forcing her into the castle district. There are so many people there, too many potential civilian casualties to risk starting a firefight. Some idiotic part of her is pleased that he’s so smart – a worthy opponent, even if she does say so herself – although most of her is annoyed that he’s so good.

It’s been weeks now, dotting around Europe in an attempt to lose him, but he’s followed her at every turn, and Natalia is getting desperate. She’s tired, and scared, and when she’s tired and scared, she tends to make mistakes.

 _Mistakes cannot be tolerated in the Red Room_ , she hears in the back of her mind, and she shakes her head, trying to clear it. She hates that that voice is the only thing that she has left of her time there; her sisters’ voices in her head have long fallen silent.

That’s how she knows she’s the only one left.

 _It’s crazy,_ she tells herself angrily. Madame never had the gateway into her head that her sisters had, all chained together in the bond of the Red Room. Why is it still Madame she can hear, and not Yelena, or Irina, or Katya? She would give anything to hear their voices again.

Natalia has spent too long in her own thoughts; she’s been standing still, letting the great echoing emptiness in her head paralyse her for precious moments. She has to get out of here, get somewhere more isolated, so she can face this man and kill him.

Turning, she starts to push her way through the crowd so she can get back down the hill and across the river. Her sharp elbows catch on a few meandering Americans, speaking in large, obnoxious voices, and her lip curls despite herself. _So decadent, so wasteful,_ she hears Madame say again, and she hears herself as a child chanting it back obediently, gleefully learning to hate and scorn the greatest enemy of Mother Russia, jeering at Disney films and McDonald's restaurants and all the other bloated deities of the imperialist West.

She’s seen enough of the world outside of the Red Room now to know that what Madame told her isn’t necessarily true, but it’s strangely comforting to repeat those things when she’s scared.

_We are stronger. We are tougher. We are better._

She misses the time when she could be certain of these things.

All of a sudden, she knows where she wants to go.

She walks across the chain bridge, forcing herself to look ahead and not to check whether she’s being followed, past the little stalls selling jewellery and mementoes. _Walk,_ _don’t run_ , she tells herself. He’s good enough that he’ll be following. Someone steps into her path to try to entice her to buy some local delicacy or other, and she almost punches him in the face. She _needs_ to get out of the city; it’s far too dangerous to be wound so tight in proximity to this many civilians.

She just has to hope that when he catches up to her, she’s fast enough to shoot first.

She will be. The Red Room does not teach hesitation.

Once across the river, Natalia makes her way to Deák Ferenc tér, where she left her moped this morning, in full view of her tail. She unlocks it. She’s never visited the park, but she’s heard about it. Seen pictures. There will be no better place for him to die.

The gun is close against her bare leg.

She lifts the heavy camera around her neck and peers through the viewfinder, taking a second to see him making his way towards her. He’s seen her. Perfect. She sets the camera down and counts to ten, then jumps onto the moped and revs the engine.

It’s a pleasant ride, once she’s out of the city, the wind in her hair, the sun on her face. When she gets to the park, she leaves the moped conspicuously by the entrance and pays the entry fee, then loiters by the gate, assessing the situation. There are a few other people there; it’s an attraction for a certain type of tourist, the kind that likes to boast that they’ve seen the ‘real’ history of a place. She’s overheard enough of them on her travels. They tread an identical path, delighted with themselves all the while for going off the beaten track. If a few of them have to die as well, it will be no great loss.

Sure enough, her tail arrives a few minutes later.

“This really what you wanted to show me? The might of Mother Russia?” he calls, killing his bike’s engine. He sets it carefully against a wall, taking so much time over it she can’t help rolling her eyes. This is the best SHIELD could do? Close up, he’s not even that tall; he’s broad, looks strong and capable enough, but his nose is crooked, like it’s been broken, and he’s smiling at her, which makes him look like a simpleton.

“Thought it might be a nice thing to see before you die,” she replies, keeping her voice steady. “You want to come in?”

Despite the fact that this is the first time they’ve ever spoken, he follows her amicably, for all the world like they’re a couple of students on a backpacking tour. He lets her negotiate the purchase of his ticket in Hungarian, though he does at least pay for it himself.

“You’re not going to kill me,” he says, once they get inside, among the first group of statues, and his arrogance is infuriating. It makes her want to shoot him so she doesn’t have to listen to his voice any more.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Natalia. Nat. Can I call you Nat?”

“No.” She won’t look at him, instead feigns interest in the nearest statue.

“Fine. Natalia. Look, I’ve been following you for weeks now. I’ve seen you in action. You’re a superb agent.” He doesn’t have to tell her this. She knows it. “You must know that they want me to kill you. But I don’t want to do that.”

She’s surprised at that, but she can’t betray anything; it could be a trap. So she says “really?”, keeping her voice neutral and her eyes on the statue.

“I don’t want to kill you. I want you to join us. Come over to SHIELD, Natalia. We’re the good guys.”

She can’t help but look at him then. “The good guys?" she scoffs, “Really?”

He actually believes what he’s saying; his eyes are wide with sincerity. How can he be so naïve?

“Yes.”

“I can’t do that.”

Why hasn’t she pulled her gun on him yet? She’s got to do it now. If she doesn’t do it now she might never do it, and what will she do then? She looks away, stares at the stone in front of her. It’s a memorial, but she can’t make any of it out, can’t concentrate on the words.

“I can’t read any of this,” he says, with a self-deprecating laugh, like he wants her to _like_ him. “Always was terrible at languages. _Parlez-vous français?_ ”

His accent is terrible, purposefully bad. If she lets him talk any more, she’ll lose her nerve. A quick glance around confirms that there’s nobody close enough to them to witness anything, so she snatches the gun from her thigh holster, wheels around, and points it straight at his head, inches away from it.

Her hands are shaking.

“You don’t want to do this,” he says, and there’s no fear in his voice. He sounds calm and reasonable, a patient parent talking to an overwrought toddler.

Natalia has always hated being treated like a child.

 _Pull the trigger, imbecile_ , she tells herself. _Pull it. Do it now. End it._

But she doesn’t move, and he reaches up and gently takes hold of her arm, as though he thinks he can just push the gun away. In the instant that his fingers close around her bare skin, she feels his mind.

There’s a rush of feeling, colour, sound, all jumbled up, all so foreign to her, and yet it feels more like home than even her sisters’ minds had, the empty, echoing space in her mind filling up so fast it almost overflows. She’s been so lost, she’s been so afraid, she’s spent such a long time drowning, and now he’s throwing her a rope.

Blindly, Natalia reaches out and clings on.

After three years of overwhelming silence, it takes a moment to adjust to the sudden flow of information and emotion that streams into her brain. It’s a kind of mental seasickness, everything swaying around her while she wills her body into accordance with her mind. When she manages to make her vision stop swimming enough to focus her vision, she sees him crouching on the ground, cringing, his hands over his ears.

“What happened? What did I do? My head...it’s so _loud._ ”

“You didn’t do anything,” she said slowly, working it out as she says it. This feeling...it can only mean one thing. “I did. I bonded us.”

He gapes up at her. “Seems a weird move, if you want to kill me.”

“It was an accident.”

“I didn’t even know that was possible.”

She sinks to the grass to sit beside him. “Neither did I.”

“Is this something you do to all your victims? Is that why they call you the Black Widow? Because…”

The jumble of noise inside and outside of her head is overwhelming. His panic and fear and confusion are flooding across the bond, and it kicks up her own agitation.

“Just...be quiet a moment. Please?”

He is, and she can feel him trying to stop thinking at the same time, reaching for the echo of a long-ago lesson in the depths of his memory. It’s inept – he’s clearly never trained himself in mental discipline like she has – but she’s grateful to him for the attempt; his thoughts, while still distractingly jumbled, retreat to a quiet hum.

How has she done this? She didn’t even know it was possible to create a bond when neither of you intended to, still less with someone who’s practically a stranger. She’s known firsthand since she was young that bonds aren’t just for soulmates, of course, no matter what kind of romantic ideals they feed to sentimental fools. The situation in the Red Room was unique, as far as she knows; they’d pushed the boundaries of science and human experimentation far further than Western scientists ever had, officially, at least. But she hadn’t created those bonds herself.

_Love is for children._

But she had never really been a child.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she turns to look at him, confused.

“I mean, I had a shit childhood too. Nothing like yours, but...my parents...my brother…” A brief muddle of images flashes through her mind and is then hastily snatched away in a clumsy attempt at shielding. “It just wasn’t very nice sometimes,” he finishes lamely.

She realises suddenly, with a wild urge to laugh, that she doesn’t even know his name.

“Clint Barton,” he says, hearing her thought before she voices it. He offers her his hand, and she takes it automatically for a brief shake, feeling the connection between them intensify with the contact. It feels good. Not uncomplicated, but good all the same. She doesn’t want to let go, but realises she probably should, and so she reluctantly drops his hand after a second or two too long.

“I’ve never had one before. Was waiting until marriage.” He gives a short bark of bitter laughter, like a joke that nobody else will get.

“I’m sorry,” she says. It seems to hit her in waves, the enormity of what she’s done. Going into someone else’s mind like that. It had hurt so much when it had happened to her, the feeling of being broken open, laid bare to someone else, unable to hide from them. She feels sick at having done that to someone else.

“Hey,” he says. “You didn’t do it on purpose. I can tell you didn’t. That makes a difference.”

“I don’t know _how_ I did it.”

“I think, maybe,” he says, deliberately not looking at her, keeping his voice steady, “maybe you were lonely.”

He lets that hang between them for a moment. She doesn’t argue, although she’d never thought to put it in those terms before he said it. Loneliness is caused by loss of attachments. Attachments are for weak people. Which is why...

“I know you don’t want to kill me,” he says.

It’s pointless trying to argue, because _he’s in her mind_. “No. I don’t.”

“So what _do_ you want?”

Nobody’s ever asked her that before, not when the answer wasn’t limited or loaded. The colour of his thoughts changes, becomes softer. It’s so unfamiliar to her it takes her a moment to recognise it, but she’s suddenly struck by how _kind_ he’s being, how he’s tried to be kind since she met him. “I don’t know. I want…I want to go _home._  But I can’t.”

There’s an overflow of intense emotion from him; pity, maybe, quickly stifled when he feels her bristle. She can’t blame him. She didn’t know that that was how she was feeling until she heard herself say it. _Home_. Has she ever had a home? Not in the way that most people would understand the word. Not a place. But a feeling, a connection...

After a moment, he looks up, and says, “Natalia…”

“Natasha,” she offers. It’s what her sisters used to call her and seems the least she can do for someone whose head she’s accidentally invaded. Clint smiles, and it’s the same stupid smile from before, so why does it look so different now she knows his mind?

“Natasha. I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. But would you consider coming with me? To SHIELD?”

“They sent you to kill me.”

“Technically, they told me to bring you in,” he says. “I think that’s open to interpretation.”

She likes the way he does that, making jokes, trying to make her laugh. She’s not quite sure it’ll work yet, but she likes that he tries.

“And hey, this was an accident, on both our parts,” he continues. “SHIELD has doctors, scientists, all kinds of equipment. I’m sure they could work out a way to undo it. Without, you know, having to kill one of us.”

His confidence in his organisation is clear. He really believes what he’s saying, as if it wouldn’t cast him aside and her with it if they can’t rectify this, if they cease to be useful. Would they kill her first and just hope that it wouldn’t finish him too? Or would they kill him in front of her, to punish her?

“Nobody’s killing anyone. I was joking. SHIELD isn’t like that.”

He thinks that, but how can he be sure? She feels a mad dash of panic skitter across her brain at the thought of him not being there any more. It’s crazy; they’ve been bonded for five minutes, they hardly know each other, and yet to lose him would be...

**_You were ready to shoot me in the head!_ **

She jumps at his voice in her mind. Somehow the tone of it is like he’s giving her that lopsided grin, which, when she looks at him, he is.

 _I changed my mind,_ she tries, and it works. He snorts.

**_Your mind’s a very scary place._ **

She bristles, and then she realises that he’s teasing her.

_Can we –_

**_Wait._ ** He drops out of the connection, and it’s like he’s taken a step back from her mind. “Sorry,” he says out loud. “It hurts to talk like that. I’ll need time to get used to it.” He then seems to hear what he’s just said, and they both feel a pang of awkwardness. “Wait. I mean. We don’t need to...we can get rid...I can…” He’s trying his best not to make her feel like he has any expectations, she realises. He really wants to give her a choice, even though this is all her doing.

“Shh,” she says. “It’s ok.”

“It definitely wasn’t covered in Bonding 101,” he agrees. “Well, maybe it was. I never went to college.”

“Neither did I.” She badly wants to say something to make him laugh, like he’s been doing for her, but she can’t think of anything to say, so she just sits.

“Kind of an odd place,” he says, gesturing around the park, the massive statues almost alien in how out of place they look so close together. “But I have to give you points for the drama of it. Were all the hollowed-out volcanoes busy today?”

She doesn’t understand him, so he explains. “James Bond. You...well, maybe you’re not missing much, actually, but.” He shows her instead, a flash of an old film, a scarred man holding a white cat. It makes no sense to her. “Damn, Natasha, it’s worth bringing you over to our side just to fill in the gaps in your pop culture knowledge.”

She smiles, almost against her will.

“I mean, I knew the Red Room was barbaric, but I had no idea it was that bad.”

It’s light, meant as a joke, but they both wince.

“It was,” she says quietly. She doesn’t want to let him see, doesn’t want him to feel it, but some echoes of it must skitter across their fledgeling bond, because he gives a sudden shudder.

“You really believe SHIELD is better?” she asks. It’s not fair to do it, because she knows he does; she just wants to share in the warm feeling of being absolutely certain that you’re doing the right thing for a couple of seconds. He doesn’t disappoint her.

“Yeah. And not just because of the movies.”

She can’t quite bring herself to share her scepticism with him about that, making sure to keep it hidden. Even though she’d love to believe it. SHIELD or Red Room, they don’t care about people. No matter who’s in charge. She’s never going to give herself to something that won’t give itself to her in return. But, she realises, it’s not SHIELD she wants. It’s him. This feeling, this quiet sense of safety, of companionship. Of no longer being alone. If she can keep that, she’ll go quietly, for now, at least.

“OK,” she says.

“O...K? OK?” he says, sounding doubtful. “Really? That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she says. “Can’t be worse than where I’ve come from. Besides, I’m curious about this James Bond guy.”

It’s not a good line, but his disbelieving expression melts away into a grin at her attempt. “OK!”

It might not last. It might be a trick. They might take him away. But for the peace in her head, she’ll give it a try. She holds out a hand to him, and he helps her to her feet, their brand-new bond shining in her head like the beam of a lighthouse. Like the distant glow of a lamp in a safehouse. “I’m ready, Clint Barton. Bring me in.”

 


End file.
